NEW YORK (dpa-AFX) – Wall Street is likely to pick up on the previous day’s slight gains for the opening on Thursday. In contrast, a slight decline is expected for the technology stocks on the Nasdaq, which had to give up a bit in the middle of the week. Investor focus is likely to be on new company figures and economic data as well as current monetary policy statements from US Federal Reserve officials.
The leading index Dow Jones Industrial the broker IG estimated around three quarters of an hour before the starting bell 0.10 percent higher to 34 263 points. On Wednesday, the US benchmark index had reached another high. For the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 
the IG indication indicated a minus of around 0.1 percent.
In the USA, the situation on the labor market has continued to ease. In the previous week, the number of initial jobless claims fell by 92,000 to 498,000. Analysts, however, had expected an average of 538,000 applications.
From the company’s point of view, the shares of corona vaccine manufacturers should again be the focus of interest. The day before, the producers of corona vaccines on the stock exchange had come under pressure after the US government had declared that it would support a patent suspension initiative to contain the pandemic. The clear losses continued on Thursday pre-trading. Pfizer’s papers fell 3.3 percent, Biontech 9.2 percent, Curevac 4.7 percent and Moderna 6.9 percent.
At Moderna, the announcement of the quarterly figures was also significant. The company earned $ 1.2 billion in the first three months after a loss of $ 124 million in the previous year. Revenue shot from $ 8 million to $ 1.9 billion. In addition, the sales target for the full year 2021 has been increased significantly to 19.2 billion dollars. While earnings exceeded expectations, analysts had expected a little more for sales.
The taxi competitor Uber is still groaning under the Corona crisis, but significantly reduced its loss at the beginning of the year. However, the result benefited from high special proceeds from the sale of Uber’s robot car division. The main business with driving service agencies lost 65 percent of sales. The delivery division around the food delivery service Uber Eats, which achieved a growth of 230 percent, remains an important pillar during the crisis. The shares lost 3.7 percent before the IPO.
The trend towards shopping on the Internet brought the online payment service Paypal brilliant business in the Corona crisis. In the first quarter, operating profit rose 162 percent and sales rose 29 percent. The increasing shift in consumption to the Internet provided further momentum in the first quarter and gave PayPal its strongest start to the year, said CEO Dan Schulman. For the current quarter, PayPal announced strong growth and raised its annual targets. The shares advanced 4.2 percent.
Tesla’s shares rose 0.9 percent before the IPO. Previously, a report had created a good mood, according to which the production capacities of the electric car manufacturer for the second quarter are already sold out. Tesla informed its employees about this, reported the Electrek blog, citing sources familiar with the matter.
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